LOTR Review - Seattle Post-Intelligencer

One 'Ring' to bring them all ... into
the theater

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

By WILLIAM ARNOLD

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

Love it or hate it, New Line Cinema's $300
million, three-part version of J.R.R. Tolkien's mammoth literary
fantasy, "The Lord of the Rings," represents Hollywood's
most dauntingly ambitious -- and financially risky -- movie project
in many a year.

First of all, it's based not on some trendy
kid's book or comic strip or director's whim, but on a classic
of English literature that's as long and complex as "War
and Peace" and filled with literally thousands of unfamiliar
creatures, places and concepts.

Second, to have any credibility, it will
have to appeal not only to a gigantic young audience, but to a
45-year-old cult of "Ring" fanatics, who'll scream "foul"
if it's not absolutely authentic in every detail, right down to
the Old English rhythms of its dialogue.

Third, it represents a genre that, unless
it stars Judy Garland, has almost never worked on film. The casualty
list of non-sci-fi films that take place in fantasy worlds is
astounding. Moreover, a big-budget 1978 animated version of "Rings"
was a critical and box-office disaster.

So, if nothing else, the three-part saga
-- filmed back-to-back and scheduled slated to be released one
a year -- represents an extraordinary act of faith in the movie-going
public, and the kind of big-gamble moviemaking that's been scarce
in Hollywood the past 20 years.

And while the fate of the three-hour first
installment, "The Fellowship of the Ring," opening today
is very much in the capricious hands of the movie gods, the good
news is that the film seems, to me at least, to pull off the difficult
trick.

On the one hand, it's complex and textured
and true enough to the spirit of the cycle that it should please
all but the most picky Tolkien buffs. On the other hand, it's
such an exhilarating and visually dazzling sword-and-sorcery epic
that it should appeal to everyone else.

It opens with a concise but dizzyingly operatic
prologue that condenses 2 1/2 thousand years of backstory: telling
how, in the ancient days of Middle-earth, a dark lord named Sauron
forged an all-powerful magic ring that he eventually lost in battle,
curtailing his power.

Over much time, the ring ended up in the
hands of a hobbit (a small, humanoid creature of Middle-earth)
named Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), who, on his "eleventy-first"
birthday gives it to his nephew and the saga's young hero, Frodo
(Elijah Wood).

But it soon becomes apparent that the unseen
Sauron has discovered the location of the ring and dispatched
platoons from his monster and goblin army to fetch it so he can
use its power to cast a darkness over Middle-earth and all the
men, hobbits, elves, dwarfs and other creatures that dwell therein.

The first half of the movie chronicles the
formation of a "fellowship" or support group -- hobbit
friends, two noblemen, an elf, a dwarf and the wizard Gandalf
(Ian McKellen) -- to help Frodo destroy the ring by tossing it
into the fires of Mordor, the dark realm where it was forged.

And the second half deals with the quest
itself, as brave little Frodo and his entourage journey to the
threshold of Mordor while encountering one harrowing obstacle
after another, not the least of which is the dark temptation of
the ring itself, which offers its owner absolute power.

As all this unfolds, the film's single downside
is a certain nagging sense of deja vu: the fact that so many of
the elements of the story -- the dark force, the all-empowering
object, etc. -- have been usurped over the years (by "Star
Wars" and others) that you feel as if you've been down this
road many, many times before.

Even more than "Harry Potter,"
the film also fails to come to a satisfying conclusion. A three-hour
sit basically leaves you in a cliffhanger situation, with the
next fix set for Christmas 2002 and no real solution until 2003.
That's a long time to totter on the edge of your seat.

Still, the film undeniably works. It's an
imaginative and intricately layered re-creation of Tolkien's world,
with precious few Hollywood indulgences (only one poop joke),
and changes that are mostly well thought out and resolutely true
to the spirit of the source.

New Zealand director and co-writer Peter
Jackson ("Heavenly Creatures") finds just the right
groove to tell the story: letting the visuals carry much of the
exposition (he never "tells" us, for instance, exactly
what a hobbit is), but never becoming so esoteric that only readers
of the book can figure out what's going on.

Jackson -- who reportedly landed the job
because he was such a big "Ring" fanatic -- also does
an especially good job of conveying the epic sweep of the saga,
and of communicating the power of its Arthurian mythology and
central metaphor: man's struggle with the dark qualities programmed
into his genes.

The characters are winning and the performances
solid. Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett may seem a bit out of place
as elves, but Viggo Mortensen (as the knightlike Aragorn) makes
an unusually noble representative of the human species; and the
baggy-eyed McKellen and cadaverous Christopher Lee -- both of
whom make music out of Tolkien's dialogue -- are splendid as dueling
wizards.

Visually, the film is a constant feast.
From the quaint sets of Hobbiton, a village of the small hairy-footed
beings, to the misty Golden Wood of Lothlorien, from the nightmarish
opening Battle of Dagorlad to the Boschian underworld of Moria,
the movie is a parade of otherworldly vistas, eye-filling spectacle
and blood-chilling mayhem (to the point that the film probably
deserves an R rating).

Even better for its box-office future, the
film works as a rousing action/adventure. Seamlessly integrating
a mind-blowing tapestry of computer-generated special effects
into a progression of action sequences in which each outdoes the
one before it, this first installment of the "Ring"
trilogy has turned out to be a genuine adrenaline rush: the movie
year's most compelling thrill ride.